191 research outputs found
Modulated Perturbations from Instant Preheating after new Ekpyrosis
We present a mechanism to transfer the spectrum of perturbations in a scalar
isocurvature field onto the matter content in the radiation era via
modulated, instant preheating after ekpyrosis. In this setup, determines
the coupling constant relevant for the decay of a preheat matter field into
Fermions. The resulting power spectrum is scale invariant if remains
close to a scaling solution in new ekpyrotic models of the universe; by
construction the spectrum is independent of the detailed physics near the
bounce. The process differs from the curvaton mechanism, which has been used
recently to revive the ekpyrotic scenario, in that no peculiar behavior of
shortly before or during the bounce is needed. In addition, a concrete
and efficient realization of reheating after ekpyrosis is provided; this
mechanism is not tied to ekpyrotic models, but could equally well be used in
other setups, for instance inflationary ones. We estimate non-Gaussianities and
find no additional contributions in the most simple realizations, in contrast
to models using the curvaton mechanism.Comment: 21 pages; v2 references added, minor clarification
Perturbations in a regular bouncing Universe
We consider a simple toy model of a regular bouncing universe. The bounce is
caused by an extra time-like dimension, which leads to a sign flip of the
term in the effective four dimensional Randall Sundrum-like
description. We find a wide class of possible bounces: big bang avoiding ones
for regular matter content, and big rip avoiding ones for phantom matter.
Focusing on radiation as the matter content, we discuss the evolution of
scalar, vector and tensor perturbations. We compute a spectral index of
for scalar perturbations and a deep blue index for tensor
perturbations after invoking vacuum initial conditions, ruling out such a model
as a realistic one. We also find that the spectrum (evaluated at Hubble
crossing) is sensitive to the bounce. We conclude that it is challenging, but
not impossible, for cyclic/ekpyrotic models to succeed, if one can find a
regularized version.Comment: v3: 10 pages, 1 figure, section III revised, conclusions changed,
references added, typos corrected; v4: numerics added, identical with version
accepted in PR
Higher order corrections to Heterotic M-theory inflation
We investigate inflation driven by dynamical five-branes in Heterotic
M-theory using the scalar potential derived from the open membrane instanton
sector. At leading order the resulting theory can be mapped to power law
inflation, however more generally one may expect higher order corrections to be
important. We consider a simple class of such corrections, which imposes tight
bounds on the number of branes required for inflation.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Target space duality and moduli stabilization in String Gas Cosmology
Motivated by string gas cosmology, we investigate the stability of moduli
fields coming from compactifications of string gas on torus with background
flux. It was previously claimed that moduli are stabilized only at a single
fixed point in moduli space, a self-dual point of T-duality with vanishing
flux. Here, we show that there exist other stable fixed points on moduli space
with non-vanishing flux. We also discuss the more general target space
dualities associated with these fixed points.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figur
Non-Gaussianities in N-flation
We compute non-Gaussianities in N-flation, a string motivated model of
assisted inflation with quadratic, separable potentials and masses given by the
Marcenko-Pastur distribution. After estimating parameters characterizing the
bi- and trispectrum in the horizon crossing approximation, we focus on the
non-linearity parameter , a measure of the bispectrum; we compute its
magnitude for narrow and broad spreads of masses, including the evolution of
modes after horizon crossing. We identify additional contributions due to said
evolution and show that they are suppressed as long as the fields are evolving
slowly. This renders -flation indistinguishable from simple
single-field models in this regime. Larger non-Gaussianities are expected to
arise for fields that start to evolve faster, and we suggest an analytic
technique to estimate their contribution. However, such fast roll during
inflation is not expected in N-flation, leaving (p)re-heating as the main
additional candidate for generating non-Gaussianities.Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures, extended references to match version accepted in
JCA
A Terminal Velocity on the Landscape: Particle Production near Extra Species Loci in Higher Dimensions
We investigate particle production near extra species loci (ESL) in a higher
dimensional field space and derive a speed limit in moduli space at weak
coupling. This terminal velocity is set by the characteristic ESL-separation
and the coupling of the extra degrees of freedom to the moduli, but it is
independent of the moduli's potential if the dimensionality of the field space
is considerably larger than the dimensionality of the loci, D >> d. Once the
terminal velocity is approached, particles are produced at a plethora of nearby
ESLs, preventing a further increase in speed via their backreaction. It is
possible to drive inflation at the terminal velocity, providing a
generalization of trapped inflation with attractive features: we find that more
than sixty e-folds of inflation for sub-Planckian excursions in field space are
possible if ESLs are ubiquitous, without fine tuning of initial conditions and
less tuned potentials. We construct a simple, observationally viable model with
a slightly red scalar power-spectrum and suppressed gravitational waves; we
comment on the presence of additional observational signatures originating from
IR-cascading and individual massive particles. We also show that
moduli-trapping at an ESL is suppressed for D >> d, hindering dynamical
selection of high-symmetry vacua on the landscape based on this mechanism.Comment: 46 pages, 6 figures. V3: typos corrected compared to JHEP version,
conclusions unchange
Vibrating Winding Branes, Wrapping Democracy and Stabilization of Extra Dimensions in Dilaton Gravity
We show that, in the context of dilaton gravity, a recently proposed
democratic principle for intersection possibilities of branes winding around
extra dimensions yield stabilization, even with the inclusion of momentum modes
of the wrapped branes on top of the winding modes. The constraints for
stabilization massaged by string theory inputs forces the number of observed
dimensions to be three. We also discuss consequences of adding ordinary matter
living in the observed dimensions.Comment: Added a section discussing the linear and non-linear stability of the
equilibrium point of the scale factors of the extra dimensions. Corrected a
typo in the original field equations and other typos. Added and changed
references. Final version appeared in JHE
Preheating after N-flation
We study preheating in N-flation, assuming the Mar\v{c}enko-Pastur mass
distribution, equal energy initial conditions at the beginning of inflation and
equal axion-matter couplings, where matter is taken to be a single, massless
bosonic field. By numerical analysis we find that preheating via parametric
resonance is suppressed, indicating that the old theory of perturbative
preheating is applicable. While the tensor-to-scalar ratio, the non-Gaussianity
parameters and the scalar spectral index computed for N-flation are similar to
those in single field inflation (at least within an observationally viable
parameter region), our results suggest that the physics of preheating can
differ significantly from the single field case.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, references added, fixed typo
Scale dependence of in N-flation
Adopting the horizon-crossing approximation, we derive the spectral index of
in general N-flation model. Axion N-flation model is taken as a
typical model for generating a large which characterizes the size of
local form bispectrum. We find that its tilt is negligibly small
when all inflatons have the same potential, but a negative detectable
can be achieved in the axion N-flation with different decay
constants for different inflatons. The measurement of can be used
to support or falsify the axion N-flation in the near future.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures; a subsection with detectable scale dependence of
f_NL added; more discussions added and version accepted for publication in
JCA
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